ASUS ROG Gladius Review: A Gaming Mouse That’ll Last

ASUS ROG Gladius Review: A Gaming Mouse That’ll Last

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We review the ROG Gladius!

We’re big PC gamers here at Unbox, and alongside our shiny (albeit aging) PC gaming rig, we like to splurge on nice gaming keyboards and mice. The problem with the latter is that it only takes a single failure to make them next to useless. We have two Razer mice (a Lachesis and an Imperator) that we can’t use anymore because the left mouse button has given up. The rest of the mouse is fine – but since the switches are hard-soldered into the PCB, it’s not user replaceable (trust us, we’ve tried). This isn’t going to happen with the Gladius, as it’s designed to be serviceable by the user if something inside breaks.

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A gaming mouse made by gamers, for gamers

We know the tag line for gamers by gamers gets bandied about by companies a lot, but trust us when we say ASUS means it. We’ve personally met some of the people behind the ROG lineup and they’re passionate PC gamers first, then ASUS employees second. As such the products that come out of the ROG line, especially things like headphones and mice are all tweaked to give gamers that extra competitive edge.

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The Gladius is no different – it’s been shaped to give you precise control over a wide variety of games. The mouse has excellent ergonomics and conform to both palm and claw grips. The rubber sides of the mouse allows for good grip while playing games, and there are two buttons on the right side that gives you additional keys if you should need it. There’s a DPI switch near the top of the mouse, right below the rubberized scroll key that switches from normal sensitivity to low. This is a nice touch, as it allows you to fine tune your controls when exacting controls are needed (while shooting a sniper rifle in a FPS game, for example). The Gladius has a 6400 DPI optical sensor, 200 inch per second tracking speed, with the polling rate set to 1000Hz.

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The Gladius uses a removable USB cord which is great, as it means the mouse can seperate from the cord if it’s unintentionally pulled suddenly. ASUS also includes two cords with the Gladius as well.

As far as looks go, the Gladius isn’t as flashy as other gaming mice, with minimal LED lights in the body. For an older gamers like us, this is a plus as it doesn’t look quite as tacky as some other mice out there that are a few lights away from being full blown Christmas trees.

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A feature that ALL gaming mice should have

What’s really nice about the Gladius is that users can easily switch out the switches for both the left and right mouse button themselves. Servicing the mouse is easy – you just need to remove the screws under the sticky feet and pry open the mouse. Once you have it open, you just pull out the switches and put in the two extra ones. Not that you’ll be doing that anytime soon – the Omron switches that are in the Gladius are rated for 20 million clicks, with the replacements rated for 1 million clicks.

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We tested the Gladius in various games like LOTR: Shadow of Mordor, Watch Dogs, ARMA 3, Chivalry and Red Orchestra 2. The mouse performed really well, and was very responsive. While the mouse works well enough as a plug-and-play device, downloading the ROG Armory software for it improved an already good mouse into a great one. The software allowed you to tweak almost every aspect of the Gladius’ performance, which came in handy for the somewhat precise mouse-work needed for Chivalry.

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Verdict: A very good gaming mouse for people who care about performance

The ASUS ROG Gladius is a good buy if you’re looking for a decent gaming mouse. The replaceable switches, excellent performance and sofware tweaks make it one of the nicest mice we’ve used so far. The bad news is that while it’s going to be offered in the PH, ASUS PH has not comitted a solid price for the Gladius as of yet. You can expect it to retail around the 2.7K to 3.6K price range when it’s officially offered here.

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